Ocado founder Gissing to leave as sales increase
OCADO’s Jason Gissing is to step down, leaving chief executive Tim Steiner as the only co-founder still at the grocer, which posted sales growth of 15 per cent yesterday.
Despite growing revenues, the firm suffered a pre-tax loss of £12.5m for the year to 1 December, compared with £600,000 the previous year.
The group said commercial director Gissing will leave the board at the annual meeting in May to spend more time with his family and to pursue his passion for environmental causes.
Gissing, who owns three per cent of the business, founded Ocado in 2002 with chief executive Tim Steiner and Jonathan Faiman after the trio left their jobs at Goldman Sachs. Steiner paid tribute to his “daily humour” and described him as an “invaluable partner” and “great friend”. He added that he would not be receiving a golden goodbye.
Ocado’s losses widened last year despite the company’s £216m deal with Morrisons to supply the supermarket with its online food delivery business.
Finance chief Duncan Tatton-Brown played down the loss and said it expected to post a profit this year. “It was always going to happen when you add big chunks of capacity,” he said.
Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (Ebitda) rose 32.8 per cent to £45.8m while gross retail sales were up 15.2 per cent to £843m.
Steiner also confirmed it is looking in for its third distribution site to help boost capacity. He said Ocado was ready to sign licensing deals with overseas partners.
“If we wanted to sell it today we could but we want to position ourselves as a core business and not do it on a deal by deal basis,” he said.